The first brief book from the A Book Apart publishing house is HTML5 For Web Designers. Jeffrey Zeldman and his HTML5 Super Friends know a thing or two about the web, best practices and how the markup language should move forward. The task of condensing and analysing the HTML5 specification was given to Jeremy Keith. Although from what I’ve read of the meeting at Happy Cog’s New York studio last year Jeremy had already been doing some swotting beforehand.

Personally I’m not a web designer, I’m just a software developer, I obviously have an interest in HTML, I’ve read Zeldman’s and Keith’s books previously and in both cases there was just something that clicked. With Jeffrey it was web standards and the use of CSS, with Jeremy it was unobtrusive Javascript.

Learning about HTML5 in this book the new additions to the language do make more sense to me. Article, header, footer, nav and aside all get their own element so you don’t need to think about divs, paragraphs, ids and classes you just use the new tags.

It really is a quick and concise book to read, laced with Jeremy’s wit and brimming with his understanding of HTML5 and how it will be used by designers and developers alike.

Jeremy Keith:

Every time you create a web-site, you are contributing to the shared cultural heritage of the human race. In choosing HTML5, you are contributing to the future.

Sir Les PattersonThe online archive of Sir Leslie Colin Patterson. Wit, sage, raconteur, late Cultural Attaché to the Court of St James and Chairperson of the Australian Chapter of the International Cheese Board.